This Arming Girdle is an essential component to a comprehensive armored harness. It is purpose designed to suspend chainmail leggings or padded leg chausses (or even upper leg plate armor) by providing a waistline anchoring point to keep the armor upright during extended movement and combat. The wide design of the arming girdle aids greatly in distributing the weight of the leg armor onto and throughout the hips and waist to minimize fatigue and keep weight from being transferred to the back and shoulders. Its thin profile will fit neatly beneath your outer layers of armor and intentionally lacks buckles or other hardware that could snag on your armor. This arming girdle is crafted from robust, padded material and has a shell of durable canvas cloth; inside its segmented and quilted construction is padding comprised of 85% cotton fiber and 15% miscellaneous fiber. Included are lacing cords crowned with pointed brass aiglets which can be used to lace your armor into position. Before the advent of the mid-15th century arming doublet which featured integrated attachment points for leg armor an arming girdle or lendener was probably used to suspend medieval mail chausses and transitional plate armor components. Several sources give evidence to the existence of these girdles and point toward their construction as being typically of quilted fabric design. Such a girdle would be needed to keep the considerable weight of mail leg armor upright and to properly distribute its weight on the hips and waist. It is highly likely that these arming girdles continued to co-exist with arming doublets even after the introduction of the doublet. SIZING INFO Small Overall Length: 33″ / Width: 9″ Can be laced and adjusted to fit a waist circumference of 30″ to 34″ Medium Overall Length: 35″ / Width: 9″ Can be laced and adjusted to fit a waist circumference of 33″ to “38” Large Overall Length: 38″ / Width: 9″ Can be laced and adjusted to fit a waist circumference of 36″ to 42″ X-Large Overall Length: 41″ / Width: 9″ Can be laced and adjusted to fit a waist circumference of 40″ to 46″
